I went awhile without an update. The Ubuntu article before this was actually written about a week ago, but I had not gotten a chance to get on and publish it, and did end up publishing it a little incomplete, which is why I am going to do another update in a few weeks on Ubuntu.

The past two weeks have been pretty busy for me, both professionally and personally. I’ve been studying for Linux+, GCIH, CISSP, and now CEH. The basic plan is to have CEH and GCIH done by the end of next week if I hear back from EC-Council soon enough. I’m also looking at switching to AMU from Strayer because I feel their program will be a better fit for me.

I did a little packet analysis at home the other night for someone in an IRC room I frequent. A sysadmin from a university came in and was having trouble identifying some traffic on his network. A quick check of the pcap file that he sent me revealed it was simply CUPS traffic, whether or not it was authorized was another story since he did not appear to know what CUPS was, but did mention that his network had both Windows and Linux workstations. It was fun in any case.

Among the many projects I have, is a desire to setup another computer dedicated to running some virtualized servers in VMware Server, probably a bunch of Ubuntu LAMP setups from their server cd. The idea would be to go a route similar to how LSO (learnsecurityonline.com) does their capture the flag contests. Perhaps I will email them and ask how they set their boxes up, whether it is in a VM or not.

Welcome to my personal site.  I’m a network security professional serving in the US Navy with just about 7 years of experience.  I blog mostly about security or technology related topics here and keep track of some of the projects I have going on.  I occasionally show up with segments on the popular internet show Hak.5.

I have extensive experience in analysis of all sorts, technical writing, intrusion detection systems, and a variety of technical IT skills.  Some of my qualifications include:

• CompTIA Network+
• EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker
• SANS GIAC Security Essentials Certification
• SANS GIAC Certified Incident Handler
• ISC2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional

You can usually find me on the Mint IRC network (irc.mintirc.net) in the channel #hak5 or feel free to use the digsby widget on the site to IM me.  You can also email me at cgerlingjr+site_inquiry@gmail.com and use the PGP key on the Contact page if you feel the need to encrypt it.

I was browsing around trying to stay awake and noticed that Lifehacker has a great article up on how to encrypt your e-mail. It primarily covers Thunderbird with PGP, but has good information regardless of whether you use that application or not.

Just remember, even though encryption is a great way to have secure communications, don’t expect your tinfoil hat to keep you safe if you’re actually engaging in illegal activities, such as planning some kind of terrorist attack. Law enforcement can still subpoena the keys from you in order to decrypt your messages should you be arrested in connection for said activity. Naturally you’d still be able to deny them the keys, but you’d just end up in jail for a long time until you did.

Also remember that the NSA can crack most forms of encryption.